There Was a Reason He Didn't Sleep Anymore
by TSEnchanted
Summary: So he'd get up and wipe his cheeks and clear his sore throat and adjust himself and fix his appearance to that of a non-broken man.


There was a reason he didn't sleep.

He kept himself chattery, jumpy, twitchy. He let his wonder for the universe overcome his need for rest. He kept his companions entertained, and even when they had to sleep every night, he just busied himself with other (mostly pointless) things.

He refused to succumb to the darkness trying to overtake his mind and leave him comatose for at least a few hours.

Although he was the Doctor and was supposed to not have fears (though he did get startled occasionally), the one thing that terrified him beyond belief was the threat of sleep taking over his mind and body.

So, like a petulant child, he simply refused. He'd do anything to keep himself awake; once he even continually stuck his arm with needles.

Because once sleep took over, that was it. All his (albeit, fake) happiness immediately drained and his superior Timelord mind just _loved_ to take his innermost thoughts and turn them into dreams. Or, nightmares, he supposed.

And his innermost thoughts were flooded with _her_.

A brilliant, beautiful, compassionate, brave girl that was all cheeky smiles and blonde-hair-with-brown-roots and sass and everything lovely was what he always had to force himself not to think about. He shoved her deep, deep, deep into the aching catacombs of his heart and left her there to occasionally squeeze his chest painfully when he saw something that made him reminisce.

But late at night, when he could no longer fight it and he surrendered to sleep, his guilt at hiding her from his mind took over. His unconscious mind immediately filled with soft pink lips and long eyelashes and tongue-in-cheek smiles and pink, and worst of all, roses.

He knew it was coming when his mind filled with roses of two colors: yellow and pink.

Even in his sleep the sight made him whimper in pain.

Because once the flowers started to appear, he lost, and his amazing Rose appeared. His Bad Wolf, his pink-and-yellow-human, his defender of the earth, his Rose Tyler. His love. His darling. His universe.  
She was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Nothing could compare. That was always a brief moment of happiness in his dreams, when he first saw the oh-so-gorgeous Rose Tyler and broke into a sprint to run to her. He ran to the only thing keeping him going; he ran to his bright sun on a gloomy day; he ran to his hope and love and _oh God he needed her_.

But then his feet were getting stuck in something, pulling down, down, down and slowing him. And as he looked down in horror, he realized it was sand. Sand on a beach located just outside of Norway in a parallel world.

_Oh. _

This is where it always fell apart. He always fell apart here, and if one were to be aboard the TARDIS during one of his dreams they'd definitely be able to hear his agonized, heartbroken cries.

Nothing was worse than tears from a Rose.

And tears she shed. Mascara streaks marred her usually-pink cheeks as she cried to him. The whole thing was a blurry mess to him, but when she looked at him with her eyes that were pleading, pleading, pleading and said, "_I love you_", everything cracked.

And the idiot he was (idiot, idiot, _idiot_), he began to babble and never got to say it. She was gone (_or was he_?) and there was no going back, no saying it.

But he definitely said it. Every time he fell asleep he didn't just say it; he screamed it. Whenever the TARDIS was parked on Earth, the birds surrounding it never got sleep because they stayed up, listening to the pleas of a broken, broken, broken man. A man so brave when he was awake, but so helpless and childlike when he was asleep.

And (_always_) when he woke up the next morning, it was drenched in sweat with tangled hair and stormy eyes and wet cheeks and please-please-_please_-come-backs and I miss yous and _I need you_s-

Then he'd catch sight of his bow tie sitting near him, or, most of the time, still on him, and he'd remember who he was supposed to be. Who he was pretending to be: an overly happy man with no worries and no troubles and no problems.

So he'd get up and wipe his cheeks and clear his sore throat and adjust himself and fix his appearance to that of a non-broken man.

There was a reason he didn't sleep anymore.


End file.
